Efficient evaluation of rules

Abstract

A method and apparatus uses a proprietary algorithm for organizing network security policy rules in a way that minimizes the number of rules considered when determining the set of rules applicable to a given protocol event.

Description

[0001] This application is a Continuation-In-Part to U.S. Ser. No. 09 / 479,781 filed Jan. 7, 2000 (Attorney Docket No. KROL0003) and claims priority to U.S. Ser. No. 60 / 212,126 filed Jan. 16, 2000 (Attorney Docket No. SECU0001PR).[0002] 1. Technical Field[0003] The invention relates to organizing data for better efficiency at runtime. More particularly, the invention relates to a technique for organizing policy rules to efficiently evaluate protocol events at runtime.[0004] 2. Description of the Prior Art[0005] Networked information systems are an essential part of many organizations. Critical systems, services, and information resources all require protection that depends on effective orchestration of a variety of factors: network architecture, security products, site security, administrative procedures, end user responsibility, and more. A network security policy is an explicit plan of how to accomplish this multi-faceted protection, what objectives the plans should meet, and what ...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Most security holes come from unexpected, misconfigured, or unauthorized services, for example, from a high-port telnet, a new service added in, a rogue server, and/or a misconfigured workstation.

This leads to confusion as to why access is being granted or denied to particular resources and may lead to unintentional breaches of security.

Customer log files and network traffic is of a volume so great that it is impractical to examine it in a short assessment visit.

The weaknesses such conventional methods are as follows:

This process does not directly ensure that data traffic on the subject network matches expectations, either explicit or implicit.

Network vulnerability scanners cannot see a host if it does not respond to packets.

Hosts which are turned off or otherwise temporarily disconnected, such as, for example, workstations and laptops, are often missed by vulnerability scanners.

This problem is compounded by the fact that scans are often scheduled for non-work hours in order to alleviate customer fears that the scans will somehow impact production systems and organizational mission.

Network scanners typically return a large volume of vulnerability information, based on all possible configured elements in a network.

The scanner tools cannot currently interpret those vulnerabilities in light of business requirements which the subject systems are intended to support, or even for the specific network architecture of which those systems are a part.

Such manual process is error-prone because the volume is so great that problems may be overlooked.

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